The Spectator’s Notes | 6 May 2006

As I write, no one knows what the result of the local elections will be, but it seems safe to predict that the turnout will not be high. Politically minded people tend to worry about low turnout because they find it hard to understand that someone might just not care very much who represents him or her in Parliament or council. Yet, in a reasonably well-run society, it is rational to conclude that it doesn’t greatly matter who wins, and leave it at that. The right to vote, which is essential, only translates into a duty to vote in extreme circumstances (hence the traditionally high turnout in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, when the balance between unionist and nationalist could be tipped either way). Now the Blairite think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research points out that those who do not vote tend to be young and poor and members of ethnic minorities, and that their abstention therefore perpetuates their ‘exclusion’.